1 - Overcast, Paperclip, Osoaviakhim - Looting and the Transfer of German Military Technology

Summary

World War II was a war of science and technology. By 1944 that truth was recognized by almost everyone, and certainly by leading officers in the U.S. armed forces. The spectacular mid-1944 debut of Germany's “vengeance weapons” - the jet-powered V-1 cruise missile and the rocket-powered V-2 ballistic missile - drove home that point even more firmly. Although ultimately ineffective, those weapons also raised the specter of a future “push-button” war fought over enormous distances - a specter even more real to the handful of decision makers who knew of the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.

On August 21, 1944, the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff created the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS), a joint operation, to coordinate the seizure of German weapons and technology by special “T-Forces” accompanying the ground units then breaking out from Normandy. However, the first technical intelligence team to enter Paris a few days later had already been formed in 1943. Major General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, had created the Operation Alsos to seek out evidence of a German atomic bomb. Other American teams and organizations soon arose in imitation of Alsos and CIOS, or in response to the vision of farsighted military leaders like General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), who formed a “Scientific Advisory Group” in fall 1944 to investigate the advanced technologies needed to maintain American air superiority in the postwar era.